


hands meant to hold

by fitzefitcher



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: M/M, Touching, Tumblr Prompt, hand holding, thrall and garrosh were besties and no one is taking this away from me, thrall doesn't like to be touched a lot of the time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 03:25:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11546511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitzefitcher/pseuds/fitzefitcher
Summary: He first notices it when Thrall walks in on him while changing.





	hands meant to hold

**Author's Note:**

> an anonymous tumblr prompt, based of off this sentence: “Hey, have you seen the..? Oh.”  
> went w/ thrall/garrosh since it was the only pairing missing out of the prompts I'd gotten and gotta complete that daisy chain. set before garrosh becomes warchief.

He first notices it when Thrall walks in on him while changing.

It’s early morning still, but Thrall apparently wakes up at the ass crack of dawn, because he’s already dressed and ready by the time he comes to Garrosh’s quarters in the hold, and Garrosh has only just barely rolled out of bed. It’s not as if he’s a late sleeper, either- oh, no. It’s just that he wakes up at _normal_ people hours and Thrall apparently can only sleep in four hour increments before he pops out of bed, fully energized. The point is, Thrall forgets sometimes that not everyone is like him where they don’t actually wake up at four or five in the fucking morning, and as such, is expecting Garrosh to be awake and fully dressed an hour ago when he walks in.

He is not.

So Thrall walks in, hardly waiting even a second after knocking and without really seeing what’s in front of him, and asks, “Garrosh, have you seen this yet?” Only he doesn’t actually get to the word ‘yet.’ In fact, he barely gets to the word ‘this,’ because upon looking up from whatever he’s holding, probably some kind of territory dispute since they’ve been dealing with Ashenvale more and more as of late, he finally seems to notice Garrosh’s lack of pants, or any clothing overall, actually. It’s in the middle of summer in Durotar, a heat wave no less, and Thrall is somehow still surprised by this.

Now, Garrosh is annoyed more than anything else, and he knows he can overreact, but he thinks it’s still a bit much that Thrall stopped dead in his tracks, eyes wide, and turned right the fuck around, mumbling a hurried apology as he goes. In fact, Thrall can’t quite look him in the eye for the rest of the day, and Garrosh honestly doesn’t think it’s that big a deal. He got over it within minutes, and Thrall did apologize (profusely) for entering without knocking. However, as time goes on, Garrosh comes to realize that they had entirely different understandings of what had just happened.

See, Garrosh was upset because Thrall infringed on his privacy, and that much seems to be relatively clear, but he was upset _only_ because of that, and Thrall’s got it in his head that he’s upset that he saw him naked, and was embarrassed. Which is baffling, to say the least. He’s not ashamed of his body- he’s got nothing to be ashamed of. And nudity, obviously, isn’t inherently shameful. That’s just stupid.

But as the days go on, he finds that this isn’t so obvious to Thrall, and honestly this is a bit of an eye-opener for Garrosh, who knows, yeah, that Thrall was raised by humans and he’s a little weird because of it and so on and so forth, but it was always the sort of weird that the Horde needed, and it has never been obtrusive or harmful. He didn’t quite realize that this affected him in such a way that it had actually harmed Thrall, himself.

Thrall eventually seems to understand that Garrosh is no longer mad at him and had completely forgotten about it before lunch had even passed the same day, but it was so strange that someone as sure of themselves as Thrall could suddenly be so meek over something so natural. But he watches him, in ways that no one sees or expects (because no one expects _Hellscream_ of all people to be shrewd or observant, and he’s going to keep them in the dark as long as he can to his full advantage), and he notices a few things.

Thrall will rarely if ever initiate physical contact. If someone else initiates, he’ll reciprocate in kind, but he will hardly ever initiate himself. Garrosh could probably count the number of people he’ll start with on one hand, and he’s not quite sure how he should feel about himself being counted among them. It’s probably why he didn’t notice it at first.

In that same vein, Thrall will not typically refuse contact, but he hardly ever enjoys it. He mostly seems to endure it, flinching minutely if someone comes up behind him and claps him on the back, hesitating the smallest of seconds before shaking hands with someone, and he seems to have perfected maintaining a certain amount of space between others and himself at all times without it being readily noticeable. But despite all of this, he never shows even the slightest hint of discomfort. He never says a single word about it, not even to stand up for himself. It seems to put him on edge in the way that animals get when faced with capture, face carefully neutral and placid, compliant out of fear and resignation. It angers him, honestly, to see his friend let his own boundaries go unenforced, but he’s angrier at the people who don’t care to pay attention to all the warning signs he’s throwing out more than anything else. Once Garrosh sees it, it’s almost painfully obvious, and it’s infuriating that no one else seems to notice it.

(Garrosh may in fact get vocal about this but not directly; if Thrall’s not going to address it then that’s his business but the Chieftain of the Fireblade has no business trying to get chummy with him like that. Thrall becomes annoyed with him for becoming belligerent with them for seemingly no reason but Garrosh doesn’t miss the streak of relief that passes over his face when his instigating gets the most-likely-a-warlock to stop shaking Thrall’s hand and start fighting with him, instead. Garrosh feels no guilt whatsoever for it.)

Noticing these things seems to set up some kind of chain reaction, in that once he starts noticing these things, he can’t stop himself from seeing more and more.

The quickest way to get Thrall to recoil is to actually touch bare skin. Once, one of his guards had accidentally brushed against him, elbow to elbow, and Thrall had managed to only flinch slightly, but he might as well have jumped out of his seat for how obvious he was restraining himself, at least to Garrosh. And he notices, that even in the height of the summer heat, where even their most stalwart of warriors have swapped out their heavy, thick plate for lighter, cooler armor, Thrall still bears the black armor of Doomhammer, and not only that, still seems to be covering up as much skin as he is able, the only thing showing below the neck being his elbows. It’s not as if he’s immune to the heat, either- he’s suffering just as much as the rest of them, if not more so, because of that armor. But he’s so adamant about not taking it off, it seems, that Garrosh begins to wonder if it’s really about being a “symbol of strength the Horde can rely on” or if he’s just that averse to being touched.

He decides to test this theory, a little while after supper, long after the sun has gone down and it’s just the two of them. It’s still smotheringly hot out, just not as bad as it had been earlier in the day. They’re sitting quietly in a little alcove in the upper part of the hold, and while the window may be open, the breeze that passes through is feeble at best, and only pushes around the hot air rather than cool them off. They’d come to a natural lull in the conversation; Thrall was worried if the heat wave was going to turn into a drought, worried if the Southfury river would reach dangerously low levels if the rainy season didn’t come soon, worried, worried, worried, and Garrosh just listened. There wasn’t really much he could do to put his mind at ease, and sometimes it was better just let him vent it out uninterrupted than try and fix something that wasn’t within his power to fix.

Garrosh had long since switched into more comfortable clothing, light leather armor during the day and light cotton at night when his duties have been completed and there was no need to be “presentable.” Thrall, predictably, is still wearing his armor. He suspects that it will not be removed until he has to go to sleep.

“You don’t have to keep wearing that, you know,” he tells him, breaking the silence. “It is way too hot out to keep torturing yourself like that.”

“It’s not that bad,” Thrall says reflexively. Garrosh raises his eyebrows at him. “It’s not,” he persists. “I’ve gotten used to it.”

“You wouldn’t have to get used to it if it wasn’t that bad,” he points out. Thrall gives him a warning look, which he masterfully ignores. “No one here is going to give you shit for not wearing the armor when it’s this hot. You look like you’re going to give yourself heat stroke.” Thrall huffs.

“I’m fine,” he insists irritably. They fall silent again, Thrall radiating annoyance and anxiety, and Garrosh just muscles on through it.

“You don’t have to be presentable when it’s just us,” he tells him. He’s not exactly gentle about it but it’s not really his nature to be. “You can relax. It’s alright.”

“I really can’t or shouldn’t, but _thank you,”_ Thrall snaps. He pointedly stares out the window into the starry sky above, deliberately not looking at him. Garrosh rolls his eyes but still moves his hand towards Thrall’s, making his movements obvious so that Thrall can see him coming and stop him any time. He does not. Garrosh takes his gloved hand in his and squeezes tight.

“No, I mean it,” he insists. “It’s alright to relax when it’s just us.” Thrall huffs again, still irritated, but he does relax the tiniest bit.

“I appreciate the thought,” he admits grudgingly. He doesn’t quite sound like he believes him but Garrosh already knows it’s going to take lots of baby steps with this jackass to make any sort of viable progress, so he’ll let him be for now.

The next morning is the hottest in a long string of hot days. True to form, Thrall still leaves his chambers fully armored and remains as such for the rest of the day, but to Garrosh’s surprise, he actually switches out of it later that evening. He’s wearing much more comfortable cotton clothing when Garrosh catches him after supper- with short sleeves, even. He wasn’t expecting him to make so much progress so quickly. It’s astonishing. Though privately, he suspects the ever-mounting heat might have had something to do with it. That being said, it does precisely nothing to stop him from grinning smugly at him when he catches Thrall’s eye.

“Not another word,” Thrall warns.

“I haven’t said anything yet,” Garrosh replies helpfully.

“Shut up,” he grumps, shoving at Garrosh’s bare shoulder with ungloved hands and no real force behind it. He just grins wider at him and Thrall groans annoyedly. He follows him back up to the little alcove, and the breeze is still no better than it was before. Thrall rants at him about the various councilors and ambassadors that have been getting on every last nerve, and Garrosh mostly just makes agreeable noises back at him and nasty little quips that make Thrall snicker at their expense. Thrall doesn’t hold his hand, but it does hang around slightly too close for it not to be deliberate, and twitches if Garrosh moves his even slightly. After a while of this, Garrosh tires of the pretense and takes it, linking their fingers together. Thrall’s pulse jumps in in his hand but he acts like he didn’t notice, continuing to rant.

The next day is no less and no more hot than the previous, but it’s been going on long enough that it’s starting to make people antsy; multiple pointless arguments break out during the day in the hold, and he was the cause of only one or two of them. How Thrall manages not to lose his temper is still a mystery to him (not that this is a bad thing, because Thrall losing his temper is usually immediately followed by a cataclysmic event caused by said temper), but he suspects, like most of Thrall’s weird personality quirks, it links directly back to his being raised by humans. He tries not to think about it too hard or it just pisses him off.

The day ends like it did the previous, with Thrall finding him after dinner and the two of them finding the little alcove and talking while Thrall never quite finds the courage to hold his hand but waits around for Garrosh to hold it anyway. And he does, because he’s not about to leave him hanging like that when he’s only just starting to confront that part of himself. Especially not when he’s done the same for him before, hundreds of times over.

The rest of the week continues like this, too, steadily growing hotter and hotter until finally, the rainy season hits, and the sky that had been completely clear of clouds is suddenly covered with a dark veil of storms. Thrall does not take off his armor during the day even once, but he does consistently take it off once dinner has passed, which is better than Garrosh expected. At the end of the week when they go back to the little alcove, there’s no longer a breeze, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s raining hard enough that cool air seeps through the open window and under the closed door anyway. They should probably close the window but it feels so nice after the weeks of heat that they can’t help but leave it open.

“I don’t know how much more of that I could take,” Thrall admits. Garrosh turns and looks at him, but before he can say anything, Thrall says, “Don’t,” and Garrosh just snorts at him.

“I don’t know about you,” Garrosh starts. “But I’m going to enjoy this while I still can.” He proceeds to shuck off his shirt and shoes, much to Thrall’s chagrin.

“Um,” Thrall says, laughing a little nervously, eyes wide. “What are you doing?”

Garrosh, in lieu of an actual response, turns to stare him dead in the eye and opens the door. They’re both blasted with cool, damp air and a little spray of mist.

“Oh spirits, no,” Thrall pleads, playing along. He’s trying to stop himself from smiling but it isn’t working that well. “Don’t.” A moment later: _“Why did you take off your shoes.”_

“Wet shoes are disgusting,” Garrosh says matter-of-factly, stepping barefoot out onto the balcony and directly into a still-forming puddle. “Obviously.” Another moment later, when the chill of the rain has actually sunk in: “Holy fuck.”

“What?” Thrall asks. He’s riding that line of ‘still joking unless you’re not, in which case I’m actually concerned’ like a champ.

“This feels great,” Garrosh tells him earnestly. “It’s the next best thing to taking a dip in the Southfury.”

“Please don’t do that right now, it’s full of crocolisks,” Thrall says, ever the worrywart. Garrosh side-eyes him as he starts taking his shoes off.

“Have you ever had fun even once in your entire goddamn life?” Garrosh asks, mostly joking. Thrall rolls his eyes at him.

“Not even once,” he tells him gravely. “It is not a Warchief’s place to have _fun.”_ Garrosh snorts, but he can’t really tell if he’s being serious or not. Thrall doesn’t appear to know, either. He takes off his shirt and hesitates in the doorway for a minute.

“Are you coming or not,” Garrosh asks flatly. Thrall huffs but this seems to be the thing that pushes him outside, taking slow, grudging steps.

_“Fuck,”_ he says, surprised somehow that he was drenched in seconds. “It’s fucking _cold.”_

“Sure is,” Garrosh replies cheerily. “You’re standing in a rain storm without a shirt or shoes. What were you expecting?” Thrall shivers violently.

“You’re an _asshole,”_ he tells him. Garrosh smirks at him. “Fuck. Why is it so cold? How are you not affected by this?”

“I never get cold,” Garrosh brags. “Unlike some people. Aren’t you supposed to be a Frostwolf?”

_“Listen,”_ Thrall starts, shaking, pointing a finger in Garrosh’s face. “Fuck off.” Garrosh chuckles, moving Thrall’s hand away.

“What the hell, you’re like a furnace,” Thrall marvels enviously at the heat radiating from Garrosh’s hand around his wrist. “How did the heat wave not kill you?”

“I actually know how to dress appropriately for the weather,” Garrosh says pointedly. Thrall rolls his eyes again and sighs grumpily, but he makes no attempt to remove Garrosh’s hand. And. He knows this is a little risky, but he tugs Thrall towards him, slowly enough that he’s broadcasting what he’s doing and Thrall can stop him at any time. He doesn’t. He doesn’t stop him from pulling him closer, doesn’t stop him from pressing him against his chest, and doesn’t stop him from wrapping his arms around his waist. Thrall inches over Garrosh just barely, but Garrosh is so much bigger, has such a bigger presence, that it’s much easier to engulf Thrall in his embrace than he initially expected. Thrall doesn’t appear to mind, arms wrapping around him in kind and water sluicing off of the both of them. He lets his head fall forward onto Garrosh’s shoulder, and Garrosh finds he doesn’t mind. He stops shivering so much.

“There,” he teases, because if he doesn’t, Thrall won’t play along with him. “Was that so bad?”

“Shut up,” Thrall says.


End file.
